I had a proper tinfoil hat moment this morning.
Apple and Microsoft (and Google/Android?) require push updates for their phones to go through their servers. Which according to the Guardian, Prism has access to.
So they can track all push notifications?

So imagine if someone suggested that push notifications, and even iPhones and Smartphones are a plant by the US government to track us all.

How this will play out and change things will be fascinating. I'm really really not one for conspiracy theories or anything like that. But I do wear a Casio F91W as that apparently labels me as a terrorist. Meh.

if you have a read of the user t's & c's of your iphone user agreement states that you give permission to allow apple/google the right to record/capture "background" audio even when the device is not being used.

It's like politicians taking bribes - we all know they do it, the only surprise is when they get caught. All those golfballs on the moors in Yorkshire aren't there for decoration, such things have been going on for decades. I'm also not sure that the government having your data is any worse than an immoral corporation having it.

revelation, they've been doing it for years and you'd have to be incredibly trusting/gullible to disregard all our modern technology regarding mobile phones/internet/digital communication as being personally secure and used or given to us purely for our benefit.

If it bothers you then use some form of key encryption when online but i imagine that is not as secure as what they make it out be either, consider your digital existence whether that be phone communication/email communication/web browsing/sat nav in your car etc as a commodity to be traded/abused/cracked/recorded and held against you if you are so found to be in contravention of so called Laws, whether or not you agree with those Laws may be an entirely different matter.

I'm sure the Prism leaks are small fry compared to what is actually going on, we're lied to on a daily basis (dons' tin foil hat and hides under the stairs).

What's the legal basis for this program?
This program legally stems from section 215 of Patriot Act, a controversial portion of the law. The section expands the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law that was passed in 1978 but has been significantly expanded after 9/11.

Section 215 authorizes the U.S. government to request businesses to turn over "the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)," a long as it needs the information for an investigation "to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

This provision allows the government to investigate both American citizens and non-American citizens. The only difference is that American citizens can't be investigated solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment. The NSA shouldn't investigate an American just based on what books he or she reads, for example.

Authorities don't need to show probable cause. They don't even need to show grounds that the person targeted is a criminal — in other words, there's no need for a warrant, which is normally required in search and seizure cases. All the government needs to do is convince the secretive Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court that that the information sought is relevant to a terrorism investigation.

Section 215 also comes with a gag clause. Businesses who receive the order are legally prevented form disclosing its existence to anybody — including the subject of the order. That's why so few cases have been disclosed.

According to a Congressional Research Service report from 2012, Section 215 "both enlarged the scope of materials that may be sought and lowered the standard for a court to issue an order compelling their production."

What is the NSA Internet companies wiretapping program?
We have fewer details about this program, which is still shrouded in secrecy. The program, called PRISM, allows the federal government to secretly collect information on foreigner users of popular Internet services provided by Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple and at least five more companies, according to both The Guardian and the Washington Post, who obtained sections of a classified 41-page PowerPoint presentation of the program.

Under this program, the NSA allegedly has real-time access to e-mail, chat services, videos, photos, stored data, and file transfers from the collaborating services. In other words, the NSA has permission to eavesdrop and conduct blanket surveillance on foreigners' online communications.

Pretty much all the companies named in the secret presentation have either denied their participation in the program, or even denied knowing that the program existed at all. But President Obama, Clapper and legislators have effectively confirmed its existence.

We don't know yet about the technicalities of the program. In other words, we don't know if the NSA has compelled these companies to install a backdoor in their servers (something that the companies denied), or if they access an API (a theory also denied by some companies). What the companies said, basically, is that they don't allow any unfettered open-ended access, but that they just respond to lawful requests. What that precisely entails, in this case, is anyone's guess.

Why is this a big deal?
"They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type," an intelligence officer, who leaked the secret documents to the Washington Post, told the paper.

If that's true and the reports turn out to be accurate, this program is just like having somebody look over your shoulder while you're on your computer, all the time.

What's the legal basis for this program?
As we explained here, PRISM stems from Title VII, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. It was created by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

Section 702 allows the NSA to acquire information on foreign targets. The provision is pretty clear on this point: it's "foreign-intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States." If the program intercepts information pertaining to American citizens, that interception can only be "incidental."

Even with such precise language, it's easy to see how the program could be abused. American data can easily get trapped in this surveillance dragnet if U.S. citizens communicate with somebody outside of the country.

"They came for the palmists, but I wasn’t a palmist so I did nothing
They came for the bungee jumpers, but I wasn’t a bungee jumper so I did nothing
They came for the players’ agents, but I wasn’t a players’ agent so I did nothing
They came for the Charles Manson fans, but I wasn’t a Charles Manson fan so I did nothing
They came for the reflexologists, but I wasn’t a reflexologist so I did nothing
They came for the camp TV chefs, but I wasn’t a camp TV chef so I did nothing
They came for the RoMos, I laughed
They came for the martial arts enthusiasts, but I wasn’t a martial arts enthusiast so I did nothing
They came for Eamonn Holmes and I think I’m right in saying I applauded
They came for the fire-eaters, but I wasn’t a fire-eater so I did nothing
They came for Dani Behr, I said she’s over there, behind the wardrobe.

Along the lines of delusional paranoia to consider we are all being tracked and eavesdropped on, I can't even imagine the processing power that would be required. Of course there is and has been this sort of nonsense going on by those who fear the masses for centuries. That technology now enables them to do it en masse is par for the course. But to want to take note of each of us? Individually? Really?

Why anyone would want to get involved in the detail of my life, apart from me, is beyond me. I'm sure they all have much more important things to do. And of course, if I have nothing to hide, then why do I care if someone i dont know wants to screen my mostly spam email inbox and browsing history?

If, on the other hand, I do have something to hide.... Well, I'd be most put out thinking that someone, something, somewhere might be on to me...

But as technology develops the ability to sift data in various ways increases... The govt seems obsessed with your lifestyle, your eating and drinking habits ect... They will use the information because they can, and the technology gives them the means to do so.

Ironic that the purported reason for the Cold War, the thousands of nuclear weapons, and the threat of ruining the world was the protection of liberty against this sort of communist style surveillance.

Even more ironic that Yvette Cooper, the 'Labour' shadow home secretary, yes "Labour' the party of the ID card, the data warehouse, and the multiple police state acts, is asking questions of the Coalition on this issue.

As i said before the issue is not just about what will this government do with the data, but what would a subsequent government do with the data.

Could the UK ever be in the situation where it was ruled in a manner similar to Franco, Pinochet, Stalin, Hitler, etc, etc, etc. Consider the McCarthy trials in the US before saying it could never happen in a western democracy such as the UK. People are easily led to do what in hindsight is clearly insane.

Data mining makes it easy to determine much of a persons life from fragments, and while stereotype's tend to be right they are not perfect, you can easily find your self labeled by your actions inappropriately.

Taping of phones and computers has ben going on for years, have a look at http://www.secretbases.co.uk , and then search Capenhurst tower, which was basicly a tower built to resemble a farm silo but which intersepted the microwave transmisions of the two towers at Prestatyn north wales and Spy hill at Delamere forest, the microvaves where being sent to Ireland, most of the site has now been cleared but the original houses that where converted to offices are stil there at capenhurst.

Along the lines of delusional paranoia to consider we are all being tracked and eavesdropped on, I can't even imagine the processing power that would be required. Of course there is and has been this sort of nonsense going on by those who fear the masses for centuries. That technology now enables them to do it en masse is par for the course. But to want to take note of each of us? Individually? Really?

Just off Beef Hollow Road, less than a mile from brethren headquarters, thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers’ own temple and archive, a massive complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol.

Inside, the facility will consist of four 25,000-square-foot halls filled with servers, complete with raised floor space for cables and storage. In addition, there will be more than 900,000 square feet for technical support and administration. The entire site will be self-sustaining, with fuel tanks large enough to power the backup generators for three days in an emergency, water storage with the capability of pumping 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day, as well as a sewage system and massive air-conditioning system to keep all those servers cool. Electricity will come from the center’s own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag—about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.

So when you read that, and it says it has on-site generators fuelled for three days, that can apparently take over from its own specially built power station, you don't think it's a load of emotive bullshit?

The thing is there is no secret conspiracy. it's just an openly corrupt system.

Given the facility’s scale and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a man’s pinky, the potential amount of information that could be housed in Bluffdale is truly staggering. But so is the exponential growth in the amount of intelligence data being produced every day by the eavesdropping sensors of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. As a result of this “expanding array of theater airborne and other sensor networks,” as a 2007 Department of Defense report puts it, the Pentagon is attempting to expand its worldwide communications network, known as the Global Information Grid, to handle yottabytes (1024 bytes) of data. (A yottabyte is a septillion bytes—so large that no one has yet coined a term for the next higher magnitude.)

It needs that capacity because, according to a recent report by Cisco, global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year. (A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.) In terms of scale, Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, once estimated that the total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes. And the data flow shows no sign of slowing. In 2011 more than 2 billion of the world’s 6.9 billion people were connected to the Internet. By 2015, market research firm IDC estimates, there will be 2.7 billion users. Thus, the NSA’s need for a 1-million-square-foot data storehouse. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

Why do you think most mobile phone cameras have no shutter across the lens?

Um, because there's no space to fit one? The (possible) new Nokia EON. Phone reportedly has one, but it's got a damned great bulge on the back.
And what possible relevance has the presence, or not, of a shutter on a phone camera have?

I've had phones with shutters across the lens. Great place to store a small quantity of fluff, dust and grit and have it jiggle about on the lens. The photos looked like instagram before instagram had even been invented.

Storm in an e-cup - the government have been tracking people of interest for years and as long as you have nothing to hide then I dont see the issue here, yeah, the government could start on the road to becoming a dictatorship in the future, but I would be seriously surprised how far that got before the people stopped it. I don't see this as a start of that. We have various bodies who work to protect the subjects suchas the ICo and others who I am sure have been involved in overseeing what is happening here.

What I wouldbe more concerned about is the use of such knowledge / information by the private sector as you never know what you are agreeing to in variouscontracts we sign up for. I've heard of a project which aims to provide data on peoples daily movements and physical locations (historic and realtime) and apparently all permissible under your mobile contract. Now thats scary and of more concern to me!

And what happens when private corporations become one and the same? When there is an incentive to data mine, ie; payment for each 'crime' detected, when the law has been redefined to criminalise that which was previously legal?